They just got a different tool to use than we do: They kill innocent lives to achieve objectives. That's what they do. And they're good. They get on the TV screens and they get people to ask questions about, well, you know, this, that or the other. I mean, they're able to kind of say to people: Don't come and bother us, because we will kill you. Bush - Joint News Conference with Blair - 28 July '06

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Jimmy Carter: US Nuke Danger

During the past five years the United States has abandoned many of the nuclear arms control agreements negotiated since the administration of Dwight Eisenhower. This change in policies has sent uncertain signals to other countries, including North Korea and Iran, and may encourage technologically capable nations to choose the nuclear option. The proposed nuclear deal with India is just one more step in opening a Pandora's box of nuclear proliferation.

..Our government has abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and spent more than $80 billion on a doubtful effort to intercept and destroy incoming intercontinental missiles, with annual costs of about $9 billion. We have also forgone compliance with the previously binding limitation on testing nuclear weapons and developing new ones, with announced plans for earth-penetrating "bunker busters," some secret new "small" bombs, and a move toward deployment of destructive weapons in space. Another long-standing policy has been publicly reversed by our threatening first use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states. These decisions have aroused negative responses from NPT signatories, including China, Russia and even our nuclear allies, whose competitive alternative is to upgrade their own capabilities without regard to arms control agreements.

Last year former defense secretary Robert McNamara summed up his concerns in Foreign Policy magazine: "I would characterize current U.S. nuclear weapons policy as immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary, and dreadfully dangerous." Read more

"War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere,
or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to
make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too
intelligent."George Orwell

Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship
in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to
establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object
of torture is torture. The object of power is power."George Orwell

The vanquished know war. They see through the empty jingoism of those who
use the abstract words of glory, honour, and patriotism to mask the cries of the
wounded, the senseless killing, war profiteering, and chest-pounding grief. They
know the lies the victors often do not acknowledge, the lies covered up in
stately war memorials and mythic war narratives, filled with stories of courage
and comradeship. They know the lies that permeate the thick, self-important
memoirs by amoral statesmen who make wars but do not know war. The vanquished
know the essence of war - death. They grasp that war is necrophilia. They see
that war is a state of almost pure sin with its goals of hatred and destruction.
They know how war fosters alienation, leads inevitably to nihilism, and is a
turning away from the sanctity and preservation of life. All other narratives
about war too easily fall prey to the allure and seductiveness of violence, as
well as the attraction of the godlike power that comes with the license to kill
with impunity. But the words of the vanquished come later, sometimes long after
the war, when grown men and women unpack the suffering they endured as children,
what it was like to see their mother or father killed or taken away, or what it
was like to lose their homes, their community, their security, and be discarded
as human refuse. But by then few listen. The truth about war comes out, but
usually too late. We are assured by the war-makers that these stories have no
bearing on the glorious violent enterprise the nation is about to inaugurate.
And, lapping up the myth of war and its sense of empowerment, we prefer not to
look.Chris Hedges

Armaments bring only disasters. When one accumulates them, this damages
the economy, and if one puts them to use, then they destroy people on both
sides. Consequently, only a madman can believe that armaments are the principal
means in the life of society. No, they are an enforced loss of human energy, and
what is more are for the destruction of man himself. If people do not show
wisdom, then in the final analysis they will come to a clash, like blind moles,
and then reciprocal extermination will begin.Khrushchev to Kennedy

contact: oxe1ATyandex.com

Disobedience is the foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
[Henry David Thoreau]